Hugh White

Tony Abbott is going to Washington at an interesting time. After months of rising tension, Beijing’s disconcertingly blunt words at the recent Shangri La security conference in Singapore, and its equally blunt actions against Vietnam in their maritime dispute, have brought the question of how to deal with China right to the centre of attention in DC. It will dominate the Prime Minister’s visit there this week.

Understandably, Tony Abbott wants America to keep on leading in Asia as the region’s uncontested primary power, just as it has for decades. And like most people on both sides of the Pacific, he keeps hoping that China would quietly go along with this, even as its wealth and power grew to match America’s.

The disputed islands offer Beijing a perfect opportunity to test America’s resolve and show that power in Asia is shifting China’s way.

This hope remains alive despite China’s increasingly strident demands for a bigger role in Asia to match its growing power. People have just assumed that China is bluffing. Beijing might want a bigger role, the argument goes, but will not risk a confrontation with America and its allies to get it. China will back off if we call its bluff by standing firm.

This was the idea behind President Obama’s pivot to Asia. He thought that China would stop challenging the status quo once he announced that America would defend it. Abbott has agreed: it is the kind of tough, simple policy he likes. But China hasn’t followed the script. Instead, for the past two years China has been systematically calling America’s bluff instead. This reality has finally dawned on Washington over the past few weeks.

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Ever since November 2011, when Obama announced the pivot in his big speech to our Parliament in Canberra, China has been deliberately creating situations that present Washington with a simple choice between stepping up to a strategic confrontation with China, or stepping back from its leadership role in Asia.

This is what lies behind China’s assertive tactics in maritime disputes with Japan, the Philippines and Vietnam. The disputed islands themselves do not justify any kind of confrontation, but they offer Beijing a perfect opportunity to test America’s resolve and show that power in Asia is shifting China’s way.

It works like this. China knows that the foundation of America’s power and leadership in Asia is its system of alliances and friendships with many of China’s neighbours, and especially its alliance with Japan. And China knows that these alliances depend ultimately on America’s willingness to protect its Asian friends from big neighbours like China. So China believes that it can undermine US leadership by showing America’s Asian allies that Washington is not willing to stand up to China on their behalf. And that is exactly what it has been trying to do in the East and South China Sea.

Of course China’s leaders do not want a confrontation with America, so they are gambling that America will indeed back down. They think that’s a safe bet for two reasons. First, they think US leaders realise that they could not quickly and decisively win an armed clash with China in somewhere like the East China Sea, and they think Washington would blink at the prospect of escalation that might not stop before the nuclear threshold.

Second, they can see Obama’s reluctance to use force in places like Syria, Ukraine and elsewhere, and the broad support which his cautious approach has received in the US electorate. And Beijing’s confidence was been bolstered by Obama’s refusal, since his big pivot speech, to commit America unconditionally to support Japan against China.

Six weeks ago, in Tokyo, Obama finally made such a commitment, sounding again like a leader willing to use all of America’s power to preserve its leadership in Asia. But this didn’t seem to worry Beijing. Within a week China launched another test of US resolve when its forces clashed with Vietnam after it moved an oil rig into disputed waters.

And Obama soon appeared to back off again. On 28 May he gave a major speech at West Point which sent some very muddled messages. He seemed to abandon his earlier focus on Asia as America’s strategic priority, scarcely referring to the region in his speech and reverting to the Bush-era focus on terrorism.

And Obama especially emphasised his reluctance to use force. America would always defend itself and its allies, he said. But “when crises arise that stir our conscience or push the world in a more dangerous direction but do not directly threaten us - then the threshold for military action must be higher”. That seems to describe precisely the situation in Asia today.

All this did not just re-embolden China’s representatives at the Shangri La conference a few days later. It also restored Beijing’s confidence that Obama would back off if faced with a choice between confronting China and supporting Japan. And that of course makes Asia a very dangerous place. The way things are going, America faces a choice between a dangerous and potentially catastrophic clash with China, or stepping back from Asia.

This is the harsh realisation that is now dawning in Washington, and with luck it will dawn on Tony Abbott too. There can be no good outcome for Australia, for America or for Asia as long as the region’s future is framed in terms of this kind of choice. We need America to remain strongly engaged, but we also need to avoid escalating rivalry and conflict with China. So we need to reframe the issue by putting the choice back on China, but we also need to be realistic about what that choice should be.

It simply will not work to say that China must accept the status quo under US leadership or face confrontation with America and its allies. China will not believe it, and wouldn’t accept it if it did. Instead we have to offer China more – a bigger role in Asia’s affairs – and at the same time make absolutely clear that if China keeps pushing beyond that it will face resolute opposition.

This is hard diplomacy, and few in Washington or Canberra are yet ready to embrace it. Certainly Tony Abbott would prefer the simpler solution of just trying to face China down. But he will find this week that the more he urges Obama to stand up strongly to China, the more Obama will ask what help Australia will be offering if push comes to shove.

Hugh White is an Age columnist and professor of strategic studies at the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre, ANU.

60 comments so far

Why does this publication shy away from using the term "aggressive" to describe China's belligerent actions? "Assertive" doesn't quite cut it when they're sending military assets into the territory of their neighbours. Just call the spade a spade.

Commenter

Wandin Valley

Date and time

June 10, 2014, 12:35AM

China's neighbours and the US have also been just as "aggressive" as China. China's claims to many of the uninhabited rocks about which arguments are raging as just as valid as its neighbours', if not more so.

The US military strategy is one of containment of China, bottling up its navy in the East and South China Seas. As China becomes wealthy and more powerful, its government wants a blue water navy that can roam the oceans to defend trade routes and so forth, like other major powers do - without seeking permission from anyone else. So there is a conflict.

Hugh White has identified a real problem, but his solution is uncertain both in conception and execution. First, there is no way of knowing where to draw the line he is advocating - only that it is further back than where the US is drawing it now. Secondly, there is no way of knowing whether a new modus vivendi would be capable of being reached, even if a good location for the line is determined. Finally, any modus vivendi is likely to be temporary, since the evolving world economy will continue to change the balance of forces.

Like it or not (and I don't), the world is now on a path to war. It's likely to be a long one, because the leaders of the contending alliances will want to try everything else first. But capitalism has done this before, with a system of imperialist alliances coming inexorably into conflict. Eventually, an Archduke got himself shot in Sarajevo 100 years ago this year - and we all know what followed. Only a workers' revolution can prevent the war that I see coming.

Commenter

Greg Platt

Location

Brunswick

Date and time

June 10, 2014, 12:03PM

China and USA are like Siamese Twins in the World Economy and from it they will soon realize it is in their mutual interests to work together to maintain World Peace.

However the dispute between China and Japan over the Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands may lead to a global nuclear war and sucking Australia into it. WW1 was triggered by a smaller event the assassination of a Duke of Austria. It is in the best interests of Australia to be strictly neutral in this dispute and to urge China and Japan to put the dispute into COLD STORAGE a proven formula used by China and India in the bigger dispute over vast territories in the Himalayan Mountains.

In his recent visit to Tokyo Obama stated that US will help defend Japan if China attack these islands but went on to say that US has no views on whether Japan or China has sovereignty over these dispute islands. This is nonsense in international affairs.

Commenter

Dr B S Goh

Location

Australian in Asia

Date and time

June 10, 2014, 7:29PM

Hugh, I agree with the majority of your analysis, and in particular why China is now testing US resolve in the Asia-Pacific, but surely the focus of both nations in regard to the risk of conflict is economic, rather than geo-political. As per recent stats, China is currently the United States’ second-largest trading partner, its third-largest export market, and its biggest source of imports. China is estimated to be a $300 billion market for US exports and sales. China is also the largest foreign holder of U.S. Treasury securities ($1.3 trillion as of November 2013) and China’s purchases of US government debt help keep US interest rates low. Conflict between the China and the US would be disastrous for both nations’ economies and surely an unacceptable risk to Washington and Beijing.

In my view, ASEAN, the US and other economic key players, like India, need to take a more united approach (economically and militarily) to balance China's growing assertiveness in Asia. Without balance, China's rightful but rapid growth will destabilise the region, rather than serve as a positive economic outcome for all of South Asia.

Commenter

JB

Date and time

June 10, 2014, 12:45AM

Professor White seems to be over complicating matters. I suspect Chinese petty posturing in the East China Sea is mostly for domestic consumption and they are little concerned with America's attitude. Equally, I imagine Chineses diplomats are quite apt at explaining the issues in Syria and Ukraine as being of little importance to anyone really, including America. Mind you America has domestic audience too. Meanwhile, economic relationships throughout East Asia are growing fantastically. If any hydro-carbon extraction is to occur in the East China Sea it will take the talents and fiscal resources of the Worlds biggist Corporations, some of which are Chinese. And unsurprisingly, Chinese energy corporations sell to the World market and energy retailers by from the World market, not simply Chinese companies. Just like American companies. We don't need Hard diplomacy; just diplomacy. Don't go looking for problems that don't exist.

Commenter

Fluellen

Location

Melbourne

Date and time

June 10, 2014, 1:08AM

China has Obama sussed: a weak-kneed, prolix, second-rate poker player, with all and sundry trampling on his past red lines all over the landscape.

Commenter

morrgo

Date and time

June 11, 2014, 1:08PM

To be succinct, Obama is deliberately ignoring China's latest face saving foray into testing US resolve. Who knows the covert extent of the Obama Administration's support to the Japanese Government, with it's growing armed forces; the major western alliance power. Hugh has a propensity for being alarmist. Asia is not a "very dangerous place". Strategically the US has the numbers within the Asian countries, including Australia and it's intellectual incumbent leader. China will always blow hard, with their version of Chinese Checkers. Washington's diplomatic population is up to the challenge, in the remaining Obama term of presidency. After that, it's a worry, less so if Hilary Clinton makes a decision to run for the presidency, with the support of Obama, against the neo-cons.

Commenter

Col'n

Date and time

June 10, 2014, 4:19AM

America an Asian super power. Perhaps someone should give Tony a lesson in geography. He is supporting imperialism of the worst kind - imperialism that belongs in a different time.

Commenter

Bernie

Date and time

June 10, 2014, 6:34AM

What Hugh means when he says that we should "offer China a bigger role in Asian affairs" is that we should stand in the sidelines and watch as China gobbles up Taiwan, Vietnam, the entire south China sea - and a couple of central Asian republics tossed in for good measure.

You see, the ONLY thing that the Chinese know, is to keep on constructing high-rise apartment towers. Sooner or later they are going to run out of land in China for this activity. They need lots of land to continue building towers for the next few thousand years!

China behaves like a petulant child throwing tantrums and should be treated like a child. China is NOT ready to sit at the adults table. Respect is something that China is yet to earn.

Commenter

Aussie-in-China

Location

Tiananmen square in Beijing

Date and time

June 10, 2014, 7:13AM

Taiwan is a part of China, even many Tainwanees agree on that. Every country is doing what it can on world stage, not least USA or Australia, you have no ground to single out China. At least China not interfering other countries internal affairs like USA or Australia do.